Report: NSA surveillance program too secret for its own good

The new inspectors' general report on the Presidential Surveillance Program is …

I've writtenextensively on the many basic problems that make all government-run, computer-automated mass surveillance programs a waste of taxpayer money. But a new report (PDF) from the Offices of Inspectors General of the Department of Defense, Department of Justice, CIA, NSA, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence shows in some detail how our government took the bad idea of building powerful computers to sniff out a terrorist needle in a digital haystack, then made it even less useful in practice.

The new OIG report on the NSA-run Presidential Surveillance Program (PSP), of which the previously revealed warrantless wiretapping program was just a part, contains a number of stunning revelations; I'll go through some of those in subsequent articles. But perhaps the report's greatest value is in the way that it provides a glimpse into how the secrecy-obsessed Bush administration actually sabotaged the NSA's massive, law-free surveillance program by overly restricting intelligence personnel's knowledge of and access to it. In short, the PSP was too secret for its own good.

A throat so deep

One of the pervading themes of the OIG report is that the PSP was really, really, really secret. It was so secret, in fact, that the president himself picked which non-operational personnel were to be "read into" the program. So if you weren't actually involved in the day-to-day running of the NSA's giant SIGINT vacuum, then the commander-in-chief personally decided whether you should know that it even existed.

This extreme level of secrecy posed myriad practical problems when it came to actually using the PSP's output in the day-to-day counter-terror work that goes on at a number of agencies—DHS, CIA, FBI, the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), and so on. Almost none of the working-level analysts who might benefit from the PSP's output were allowed to know of the program's existence, so getting that output into those workers' hands meant carefully stripping it of any hints about its provenance, thereby rendering it significantly less valuable.

The problem was especially acute at the FBI, which wasn't as widely looped in on the PSP as the CIA (more on the latter, shortly), despite the fact that the Bureau is involved in domestic counter-terrorism. When the few people at the FBI who were in-the-know about PSP's existence got "product" from it, they had to be very careful about what they did with the information, lest some lowly FBI guy in the trenches learn of the existence of the program.

But even if FBI agents had known of the existence of PSP and of the origin of some of the tips they were getting, that still wouldn't have been much help. Just ask the CIA, where more people knew about the PSP but still had no idea how it worked.

The multibillion-dollar electronic anonymous tipster

The CIA seemed to have an easier time dealing with the PSP since more of its people were read into the program, but there were still serious problems. Most of those who had knowledge of the PSP were senior managers and not the working-level personnel who could have made practical use of the PSP's products.

The report notes that even for the few working-level CIA folks who were read in, "much of the PSP reporting was vague and without context," so they wound up relying more on other, more familiar and accessible analytical tools and sources. The briefing that CIA folks were given on read-in didn't tell them much about how PSP worked or how to use its products, and without that knowledge the output of the program was of limited intelligence value.

Like journalists, CIA officers are trained to consider the source of their incoming information in order to evaluate it by placing it in context. In the case of the PSP, the source was a giant black box—a sort of electronic anonymous tipster who would periodically drop vague, context-free nuggets into the already unmanageably wide inbound information stream that they had to sift each day.

This black box problem highlights the key barrier that the PSP's deep secrecy raised to its effectiveness in the war on terror. The output of any information-gathering system will eventually have to be evaluated by a human; but for any human knowledge worker who is tasked with looking for a slender needle of relevance in an overwhelmingly large informational haystack, any additional data that arrives free of context, where the worker doesn't have any understanding of the mechanisms that produced it, is noise, not signal.

You can easily imagine that when the NSA tells a CIA analyst, "Here's a tip to add to your pile of things to look into; it comes from our giant, computerized black box, and you have no idea how that box works or how it actually decided that this (potentially vague) tidbit was important," the analyst may prefer instead to tune out that incoming data and to turn instead to the tools and sources he knows.

It wasn't just the CIA that ran into the black box problem. According to the OIG report, "NCTC analysts noted that the NSA policy protecting the source of the PSP information would have resulted in them not fully understanding the value of the PSP information."

Another widely quoted section of the report bears out this same point:

NCTC analysts involved in preparing the threat assessments told the ODNI OIG that only a portion of the PSP information was ever used in the ODNI threat assessments because other intelligence sources were available that provided more timely or detailed information about the al-Qaida threat to the United States. During the interviews, the NCTC analysts noted that PSP information was only one of several valuable sources of intelligence information available to them.

In the end, the PSP's secrecy put it at a disadvantage vs. other sources of information that working-level analysts knew and trusted. So when the OIG sought to isolate the impact of the PSP on the nation's intelligence-gathering activities, the best that analysts in one agency after another could tell them was that the PSP product was just one source among many, and a difficult one to use at that.

The PSP was shrouded in such deep secrecy partly for operational security reasons, but also because of political considerations. Some of what went on under the auspices of the PSP was later determined to be illegal, and in the next article we'll take a closer look at the darker corners of the program.

There are so many ways for terrorists to communicate these days that render crap like this useless in the first place. I can think of 5 ways to disguise data on a landline connection easily and moderately securely with crap bought at Goodwill (9600 baud modem anyone?). Anything that is found is going to be because of either pure random chance or sheer stupidity. To me, the cost far outweighs the benefits to our society. Call me callous, but it's not worth billions of dollars to "save even one life"; especially when those billions could be going to far more meaningful ventures that are proven to work.

I have documents pertaining to allegations of illegal electronic surveillance, obstruction of justice & making false statements in writing to Congress in regards to the documented "existence" of a federal internal affairs investigation which the U.S. Marshals Service denied existed when questioned by Congress. Please review the supporting information within my website. Thank you.

Originally posted by koolraap:Any examples of what intel looks like, or the sort of information it can contain? And any examples of the program producing any useful information that was ignored at the time?

Originally posted by koolraap:Any examples of what intel looks like, or the sort of information it can contain? And any examples of the program producing any useful information that was ignored at the time?

As interesting as that may be, I'm under the impression that even this data would be obfuscated and abstracted to the point of unintelligibility. They would probably only create questions rather than answer any.

All (I repeat, ALL) high quality intel is like this. Using more and more of the info helps the enemy figure out where you got the info from. You will frequently have to let actionable intel pass without doing anything about it, all because you want to keep the source secret and you expect even more valuable info from it in the future.

The thing about this begs the question. If the President can break the law in cases of nat'l security, what other laws can be broken? I'm reminded of Condoleeza Rice - what she said (paraphrased) "if the President does it, it can't be illegal." Brings a whole new creepiness factor to the office, if you ask me.

Originally posted by kd9280:The thing about this begs the question. If the President can break the law in cases of nat'l security, what other laws can be broken? I'm reminded of Condoleeza Rice - what she said (paraphrased) "if the President does it, it can't be illegal." Brings a whole new creepiness factor to the office, if you ask me.

Originally posted by Ilo:All (I repeat, ALL) high quality intel is like this. Using more and more of the info helps the enemy figure out where you got the info from. You will frequently have to let actionable intel pass without doing anything about it, all because you want to keep the source secret and you expect even more valuable info from it in the future.

The difference seems to be that you usually don't want to compromise your source to the enemy. In this case it seems, they didn't want to compromise their source to US law enforcement.

- Hard to use doesn't equal useless. Jon's quote at the end basically said the information was one valuable tool among many. Even if you had another channel for info it's always nice to have confirmation.

- Exposing your methods allows your enemy to adjust - just because you know ways to circumvent an asset doesn't mean you will if you don't know it's happening.

- Was it worth it? If the intel didn't provide information that prevented a major attack on the US or US ally, the answer is a definite no. If the intel did provide information to prevent an attack or expose terrorist methods, the answer is debatable.

- Despite the posters declaring guilty, I'll wait for the Supreme Court to decide whether intercepting international phones calls without a warrant (even when one caller is a US citizen) is illegal. I'll still haven't seen a good explanation from Congress, Executive Branch, Judiciary on why FISA wouldn't work for their needs. I mean FISA does allow an after the fact warrant, right?

Originally posted by Uncouth Youth:A base of paranoia and heavy-handedness, blended with a dose of incompetence and arrogance, poured over naked lust for power and garnished with lies: serves 300 wingnuts.

Don't forget the crunchy lack of respect for a person's well-being (read about halfway through the report of how they tried to get a seriously ill Ashcroft to sign a renewal.)

Originally posted by irfoton:- Despite the posters declaring guilty, I'll wait for the Supreme Court to decide whether intercepting international phones calls without a warrant (even when one caller is a US citizen) is illegal. I'll still haven't seen a good explanation from Congress, Executive Branch, Judiciary on why FISA wouldn't work for their needs. I mean FISA does allow an after the fact warrant, right?

FISA allows an after-the-fact warrant if it falls within 15 days of the emergency filing - as seen here

But a new report (PDF) from the Offices of Inspectors General of the Department of Defense, Department of Justice, CIA, NSA, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence shows in some detail how our government took the bad idea of building powerful computers to sniff out a terrorist needle in a digital haystack, then made it even less useful in practice.

Considering that we have satellites in orbit that can reportedly read the writing on a match box from 200 miles up, it doesn't strike me that "finding a needle in a haystack" would be all that improbable. And of course, if at first you don't try to find the proverbial needle, then you never will, and reduce your chances of finding it from slim to none. Add to this the fact that since you already know the needle is there--and your task is but to find it--then not looking for the needle makes no sense at all.

The terrorist climate today is decidedly not one of the traditions and "rules" that governed the cold war. No, the climate today is one in which hot-headed irrational people, not necessarily connected with a particular government, plot to commit suicide, whack off heads on camera, and destroy as many buildings and civilians as they can in the process. I vote we keep looking for the needle we already know is there. Many, many times, we have found it and averted disaster. We don't always find it, or find it in time, but I believe that looking for it is not only noble, but expedient.

quote:

But perhaps the report's greatest value is in the way that it provides a glimpse into how the secrecy-obsessed Bush administration actually sabotaged the NSA's massive, law-free surveillance program by overly restricting intelligence personnel's knowledge of and access to it. In short, the PSP was too secret for its own good.

Right--yep, I'd call this report's chief value to be one of politics of a particularly nasty and slanderous and equivocating type that seeks to turn national security into a political circus in which the inability of Democrats to do anything aside from taxing and spending is obscured by the specter of "George Bush" held captive in the center ring...

It's surprising to see that you haven't figured out that the Democratic-controlled Congress of the last 2.5 years, coupled with the Democrat-controlled Obama administration of the last 6 months, will do anything to avoid their own culpability and accountability in all of these matters. Thankfully, I am sure that this particular dodge won't work in perpetuity as indeed Obama's ever-sinking poll numbers indicate.

Inter-bureaucracy rivalry, competition, and security inside the government is not, I repeat not, a product of the "Bush administration"--which no longer exists (I also marvel at how many people haven't figured this out yet.) It's existed in the US. for decades if not centuries. The reasons for it are legion and the vast, vast majority of those reasons have nothing whatever to do with George Bush, or for that matter, Barack Hussein Obama, either.

The fact is that while presidents and Congressmen come and go, the unelected bureaucracy that actual runs the country on a daily basis is eternal. Not only is this bureaucracy completely unelected, it is also almost completely unknown to the public at large, as well. To me, this is the best argument of them all for a small--much, much smaller--Federal government. That concept, I think, is the true "needle in a haystack" here, one which I doubt we will ever find.

Originally posted by WaltC:... the Democratic-controlled Congress of the last 2.5 years, coupled with the Democrat-controlled Obama administration of the last 6 months, will do anything to avoid their own culpability and accountability in all of these matters.

So the new boss is the same as the old boss? That's no big surprise, but doesn't seem to be a reason not to demand accountability from our government. Are you saying we should only do that when one party holds the presidency?

Right--yep, I'd call this report's chief value to be one of politics of a particularly nasty and slanderous and equivocating type that seeks to turn national security into a political circus in which the inability of Democrats to do anything aside from taxing and spending is obscured by the specter of "George Bush" held captive in the center ring...Wink

It's surprising to see that you haven't figured out that the Democratic-controlled Congress of the last 2.5 years, coupled with the Democrat-controlled Obama administration of the last 6 months, will do anything to avoid their own culpability and accountability in all of these matters. Thankfully, I am sure that this particular dodge won't work in perpetuity as indeed Obama's ever-sinking poll numbers indicate.

Inter-bureaucracy rivalry, competition, and security inside the government is not, I repeat not, a product of the "Bush administration"--which no longer exists (I also marvel at how many people haven't figured this out yet.) It's existed in the US. for decades if not centuries. The reasons for it are legion and the vast, vast majority of those reasons have nothing whatever to do with George Bush, or for that matter, Barack Hussein Obama, either.

The fact is that while presidents and Congressmen come and go, the unelected bureaucracy that actual runs the country on a daily basis is eternal. Not only is this bureaucracy completely unelected, it is also almost completely unknown to the public at large, as well. To me, this is the best argument of them all for a small--much, much smaller--Federal government. That concept, I think, is the true "needle in a haystack" here, one which I doubt we will ever find.

++++++++

I do want to repeat some of the important points, since the echo chamber does not want to deal with the facts. First, this report comes as democrats have total and complete control of the federal government. The echo chamber needs to read that sentence again. It has been within the democrats power to change these programs, for the last couple of years controlling congress, and the last six months since Obama was elected. Yet, the programs are not terminated but expanded. Second, how would the echo chamber have responded to a report blaming Clinton for all that ails the country once the republicans had the congress and the white house? Gee, you think they might have viewed such a report with a grain of salt? Fast forward to today when democrats want to ride the "blame bush train" for as long as possible, I am shocked a report done under the direction of partisan democrats would yield a blame bush tag line. This is also suspicious since the last declassifying venture of the current administration LIED to us. Remember how Obama released a report saying coercive interrogation did not work? Remember how the administration cleverly edited out all the references to the successes of the program while leaving in all the salacious information to harm bush? Remember how Obama went before the press and the country and lied his ass off about the program being useless and gathering no significant intel? One little problem, the administration did a sloppy job and did not remove all of the references to the successes of the program. There were several references which talked about how intel gained in these ways proved very valuable. The funny thing about these references, is they appeared to be non-sequitors pointing to pages and investigations that were not declassified. Missed in the redacting was also a nice summary of how the program had, indeed, been a success. For the truly politically blind, no these were not left in on purpose or Obama would not have lied about the program. The press did make a feigned attempt to ask him about these references and, of course, since he was lying he had no answers for the questions.

Given the current administrations past record of lying where security matters are concerned and the partisan nature of politics, an intelligent and non-partisan person would wonder just how accurate this report is and how much is political bs.

Originally posted by Ilo:All (I repeat, ALL) high quality intel is like this. Using more and more of the info helps the enemy figure out where you got the info from. You will frequently have to let actionable intel pass without doing anything about it, all because you want to keep the source secret and you expect even more valuable info from it in the future.

The difference seems to be that you usually don't want to compromise your source to the enemy. In this case it seems, they didn't want to compromise their source to US law enforcement.

If you have ever spent any time in the military or law enforcement, you would know that some things are kept secret from the troops and even most of the higher ups. The less people that know about something the less chance the information will get out. This type of secrecy has been common practice in governments pretty much since there have been governments. It's just gotten more sophisticated. And just because the guys lower down the chain could use the system, doesn't mean you give them all access to it. You always hold some things in reserve, even from your own people, just in case. It's a tool like a weapon or radio, nothing more.

For example, there are times when police officers are out-gunned by some criminals who have obtained weapons of massive fire power. They could at times have definite use of say a 30mm chain gun to suppress the enemy in a major fire fight. That doesn't mean that you equip every patrol car with a turret and a chain gun. They bring in specific forces for that kind of event. Just like with an intelligence tool, you don't let everyone have access to it. The more powerful or dangerous it is, the more you restrict it's use. This also prevents wide-spread abuse of it as well.

Also, the more you use something the more information is leaked about how it works and therefore how to circumvent it. Bottom line, there are just some things that need to be kept secret. This may or may not be one of them, but unless we know the whole story, making an uninformed judgment is just flapping our gums because we don't know all the circumstances and therefore don't know what we are talking about. There may be agents involved in under cover activity that is in the area where some of the intel comes from. Even if they are not the source of the intel, using it may tip off or spook the people they are infiltrating and get them killed, even if they didn't make any mistakes or provide the information. They just happened to be in the area where the information was used by someone who didn't know it and suffered the consequences.

I'm guessing that's why Obama hasn't released the information to the public. He is now in a position to see the whole picture and can now make an informed decision, which will probably be to keep it under wraps, at least until it is no longer useful to do so. It sucks, but sometimes there are no good choices, only lesser degrees of bad ones.

Originally posted by kd9280:The thing about this begs the question. If the President can break the law in cases of nat'l security, what other laws can be broken? I'm reminded of Condoleeza Rice - what she said (paraphrased) "if the President does it, it can't be illegal." Brings a whole new creepiness factor to the office, if you ask me.

It's amusing to note that this idea was originally quoted from Nixon.

"...When the president does it that means that it is not illegal."

It'd be funny if it weren't deliberate. Cheney deliberately modeled the Bush administration on the Nixon one and it had the same result: disgrace.

The important point here seems to be completely missed by everybody who is trying to place political blame on either the recent administration or the current one.

An illegal intelligence program defeats its own purpose by its nature because revealing enough about the program to make it useful also fatally wounds the program itself. Thus not only is it worthwhile to make sure these programs follow the "rule of law" for moral and political reasons, enlightened self interest would indicate it's the only reasonable thing to do.

Originally posted by WaltC:Right--yep, I'd call this report's chief value to be one of politics of a particularly nasty and slanderous and equivocating type that seeks to turn national security into a political circus in which the inability of Democrats to do anything aside from taxing and spending is obscured by the specter of "George Bush" held captive in the center ring...

It's surprising to see that you haven't figured out that the Democratic-controlled Congress of the last 2.5 years, coupled with the Democrat-controlled Obama administration of the last 6 months, will do anything to avoid their own culpability and accountability in all of these matters. Thankfully, I am sure that this particular dodge won't work in perpetuity as indeed Obama's ever-sinking poll numbers indicate.

Inter-bureaucracy rivalry, competition, and security inside the government is not, I repeat not, a product of the "Bush administration"--which no longer exists (I also marvel at how many people haven't figured this out yet.) It's existed in the US. for decades if not centuries. The reasons for it are legion and the vast, vast majority of those reasons have nothing whatever to do with George Bush, or for that matter, Barack Hussein Obama, either.

The fact is that while presidents and Congressmen come and go, the unelected bureaucracy that actual runs the country on a daily basis is eternal. Not only is this bureaucracy completely unelected, it is also almost completely unknown to the public at large, as well. To me, this is the best argument of them all for a small--much, much smaller--Federal government. That concept, I think, is the true "needle in a haystack" here, one which I doubt we will ever find.

Typical WaltC. I could have written this for you since you are so predictable. All I see here is spin and trolling. In a boring and transparent gambit you invoke politicization and thereby feel entitled to disregard the conclusions. I wish poisoning the well in political discussion left with the Bush Administration since it was their favorite fallacy but, alas, it appears they have helped this plague spread ever farther. Facts, not fallacies, please.

Originally posted by tx2tn:If you have ever spent any time in the military or law enforcement, you would know that some things are kept secret from the troops and even most of the higher ups.

Naturally there are valid reasons to impose secrecy, but there are also a lot of invalid reasons. Frequently secrecy is used to avoid accountability and/or embarrassment. In this case apparently, the legality of the program was so completely open to debate that extreme secrecy had to be maintained in order to preserve the program from our own legal process. This extreme secrecy apparently also negated whatever benefit was to be had from the program.

Bear in mind that the wheels started to come off this stuff when Bush's own attorney general (Ashcroft) found out what they were doing and the legal justifications being used to enable it.

First, when did ARS add a op-ed section? Even if I agree with the author, his bias is blinding. How do you get from:

quote:

...other intelligence sources were available that provided more timely or detailed information about the al-Qaida threat to the United States...

and

quote:

...PSP information was only one of several valuable sources of intelligence information available...

to

quote:

...In the end, the PSP's secrecy put it at a disadvantage vs. other sources of information that working-level analysts knew and trusted... ...and a difficult one to use at that.

Would you like to come up with a source for those working-level analysts you portray as finding the PSP intelligence untrustworthy and difficult to use? If this isn't twisting a quote to serve one's own agenda I don't know what is.

Second, why devolve this comment thread into the same old "Blame the Republicans"... no... "Blame the Democrats"... NO!!! "Blame Government".

It is a Bush/Cheney Program.

The program has limited value at great cost.

The program is illegal and violates many of the rights American's hold sacred.

Finally, there are trolls like WALTC, who seems to think 24 is a reality TV show, who simply stupefy me... I am at a loss for words.

Originally posted by NickN:The important point here seems to be completely missed by everybody who is trying to place political blame on either the recent administration or the current one.

An illegal intelligence program defeats its own purpose by its nature because revealing enough about the program to make it useful also fatally wounds the program itself. Thus not only is it worthwhile to make sure these programs follow the "rule of law" for moral and political reasons, enlightened self interest would indicate it's the only reasonable thing to do.

It seems impossible to have a discussion about any action by any political party in the US these days without the counterargument being "BUT THE OTHER PARTY DID...". As you said, this was an illegal program. One, that by all accounts, was never going to work in the first place. Then to top it off no one who could use the information had access to it. As far as this single project goes, the entire thing was a huge mistake, regardless of who's program it was.

A brilliant article Ars, thankyou for sticking to the facts and continuing to cover this story (notice how Jon made no mention of the political party involved, but stuck to the facts of the program? A tech website can provide better news reporting than a lot of popular news outlets...)

Originally posted by WaltC:.....Add to this the fact that since you already know the needle is there--and your task is but to find it--then not looking for the needle makes no sense at all.

How do you know its there ? No one is suggesting you don't look. All anyone is asking for is accountability....you know.....the rule of law and all that....?

quote:

Originally posted by WaltC:The terrorist climate today is decidedly not one of the traditions and "rules" that governed the cold war. No, the climate today is one in which hot-headed irrational people, not necessarily connected with a particular government, plot to commit suicide, whack off heads on camera, and destroy as many buildings and civilians as they can in the process. I vote we keep looking for the needle we already know is there. Many, many times, we have found it and averted disaster. We don't always find it, or find it in time, but I believe that looking for it is not only noble, but expedient.

Again, why do you say today is different? The cold war was what, 40 years of our history compared to the other 160+ that were filled with events that would qualify for the label of "Terrorism" today. People (especially people with power) who are willing to let the rule of law lapse are far more dangerous to our republic than any terrorist.

quote:

Originally posted by WaltC:Right--yep, I'd call this report's chief value to be one of politics of a particularly nasty and slanderous and equivocating type that seeks to turn national security into a political circus in which the inability of Democrats to do anything aside from taxing and spending is obscured by the specter of "George Bush" held captive in the center ring...

It's surprising to see that you haven't figured out that the Democratic-controlled Congress of the last 2.5 years, coupled with the Democrat-controlled Obama administration of the last 6 months, will do anything to avoid their own culpability and accountability in all of these matters. Thankfully, I am sure that this particular dodge won't work in perpetuity as indeed Obama's ever-sinking poll numbers indicate.

I don't disagree with this, If any branch is to blame it is these spineless losers. Basically this branch delegated all their power to the other two and sat on their hands and watched the game from the sidelines lest someone blame them for doing........something.

quote:

Originally posted by WaltC:Inter-bureaucracy rivalry, competition, and security inside the government is not, I repeat not, a product of the "Bush administration"--which no longer exists (I also marvel at how many people haven't figured this out yet.) It's existed in the US. for decades if not centuries. The reasons for it are legion and the vast, vast majority of those reasons have nothing whatever to do with George Bush, or for that matter, Barack Hussein Obama, either.

The fact is that while presidents and Congressmen come and go, the unelected bureaucracy that actual runs the country on a daily basis is eternal. Not only is this bureaucracy completely unelected, it is also almost completely unknown to the public at large, as well. To me, this is the best argument of them all for a small--much, much smaller--Federal government. That concept, I think, is the true "needle in a haystack" here, one which I doubt we will ever find.

The bureaucracy is the implementation of the things that Congress and the President make into law. The bureaucracy exists at the mercy of the Congress. The reason the bureaucracy changes so little and so slowly is because of the nature of Congress. It is easy to cut the bureaucracy if the political will is there. If Congress votes tomorrow to remove the Department of Homeland Security and the President signs it(even if he doesn't sign it, Congress can still get it done if the will is there), its gone. Congress just needs the political will to make it happen. Getting Congress to agree on something major is tough though. It was designed that way from the beginning so your real issue is with the constitution and the founding fathers. History proves that they were actually quite smart people. Genius, some might say. I say the smart money is to stick with the system they set in place.

A smaller federal government would help but then you lose a lot of your resources to build precious multi-billion dollar communications eavesdropping boondoggles.

Originally posted by WaltC:I'd call this report's chief value to be one of politics of a particularly nasty and slanderous and equivocating type that seeks to turn national security into a political circus

I'd call this post's chief value to be one of faulty debate of a particularly common and vacuous and annoying type that seeks to turn a good, neutral article into a discredited political piece.

Originally posted by tx2tn:If you have ever spent any time in the military or law enforcement, you would know that some things are kept secret from the troops and even most of the higher ups.

Naturally there are valid reasons to impose secrecy, but there are also a lot of invalid reasons. Frequently secrecy is used to avoid accountability and/or embarrassment. In this case apparently, the legality of the program was so completely open to debate that extreme secrecy had to be maintained in order to preserve the program from our own legal process. This extreme secrecy apparently also negated whatever benefit was to be had from the program.

Bear in mind that the wheels started to come off this stuff when Bush's own attorney general (Ashcroft) found out what they were doing and the legal justifications being used to enable it.

Well, first off in reference to

quote:

This extreme secrecy apparently also negated whatever benefit was to be had from the program.

How do you know this? Was I not paying attention and you were suddenly elected President or something? It may well be a complete and utter waste of time and money, but it may also have garnered information that you or the reporters or myself, or some lower ranking agent/official that is pissed off because he didn't get to use the new toy, don't know about. It is a Secret agency. That means they don't tell everyone. Just because not everyone and their mother got to use it doesn't mean it wasn't useful. It just wasn't useful to them. You don't know, I don't know, and those that do know aren't talking. So all the conjecture is just a load of crap and a waste of words, until the truth is actually revealed by the people who actually know the full story and all the details.

As far as the legality of the whole thing, that is also up for debate. As far as I can tell there are no Constitutional rights being broken, just regular laws on the books about wiretapping and such. This is questionable, but there have always been certain allowances made for certain people in the performance of their public duty to break or temporarily be allowed to be exempted from certain laws. The policeman, fireman, and ambulance driver can all break the local traffic laws by speeding and cutting through traffic lights and across lines when needed. The policeman can fire his weapon inside the city limits, and assault/subdue a criminal if need be. The thing is the times, means, and circumstances for going around the laws are limited and monitored. Secret agencies like this one are also under limits and monitors, but they are typically also secret by necessity to keep the agency secret. The reason they don't want it going to court is because once it is in the court system, there is no way in hell, legal or not, that it will remain a secret. In fact, once that happens it's usually only a matter of days, if not hours until it is on CNN. Even if there is some shady stuff going on, it can't go on unmonitored for longer than that current administration is in office. Thus, the situation now with Obama taking over, and the details still not being revealed, leads me to believe that it either it actually was legal, or the infractions were not enough to justify jeopardizing the agency and the results it is achieving. Obama is in the position that every other President has been in when finally getting into office and being presented with the "Rest of the Story" as Paul Harvey would say. They get in to office learn the rest of the details and just like all the others before them sheepishly mutter the words "oh .......... I didn't know that." The best that we can hope for is that with a continually changing administration, any mistakes or wrong doings by one will be corrected with the next one.

Originally posted by tx2tn:As far as I can tell there are no Constitutional rights being broken, just regular laws on the books about wiretapping and such. This is questionable, but there have always been certain allowances made for certain people in the performance of their public duty to break or temporarily be allowed to be exempted from certain laws. The policeman, fireman, and ambulance driver can all break the local traffic laws by speeding and cutting through traffic lights and across lines when needed.

This is absurd, nobody is allowed to disregard the law (wasn't there a big fuss about this under Clinton?). There are exceptions written into the law but these come with specific requirements. For example, an emergency vehicle is allowed to ignore traffic lights when using its emergency warning lights but at other times an emergency vehicle going through a red light is violating the same laws as everybody else (of course enforcement of this transgression is unlikely, just like an off duty police officer pulled over for speeding won't get a ticket). Likewise there are exceptions built into the laws for surveillance. In this case, the White House found one guy at DOJ (John Yoo) who said they could ignore the law's requirements and they refused to tell anybody else at DOJ what they were doing. By late 2003 other member's of Bush's DOJ found out what these claims were (and how absurd the justifications were) and told the White House what they were doing was illegal. At first the White House ignored the administration's own Justice Department but eventually they changed the program and sought changes to the law.

In this case, it certainly seems likely that the secrecy of the program was used in part to avoid the fact that most of the administration's own lawyers would determine it to be illegal and force it to be changed and/or discontinued.

Fear of revealing sources is nothing new. The US knew there was an attack about to happen on Pearl harbour having cracked the Japanese codes, allegedly but let it happen rather than reveal sources. Conveniently, this also provided the anger level to justify joining WWII. A few months later, the same sources told of the attack on Midway, which was met with a carrier force that won the day. (IIRC, the Yorktown was partially refit and sent out in record time to help?)

The problem is, are we stupid or are there even more interesting sources we haven't guessed at? It's pretty much gospel in the tech world, that if it goes electronic the NSA can read it; and there are only a few high-tech encryptions they can't break. Why would anyone be surprised if the information came out? Why did it have to be so super-double-plus-top secret? The only secret would be avoiding informing the enemy just how extensive our real surveillance could be. Even they know we can listen in, which is why bin Laden and his crew stay away from radios and phones.

Reminds me of the story of the arms negotiators in the Reagan era. At one talk, one of the Americans got annoyed, dragged out a list and said "we know you have this many missles at this base, this many at this base, etc." The shocked Soviet Air Force marshall pointed to the Soviet Admiral beside him, and said "You can't tell him that! It's top secret, he's not allowed to know!"

Originally posted by NickN:The important point here seems to be completely missed by everybody who is trying to place political blame on either the recent administration or the current one.

An illegal intelligence program defeats its own purpose by its nature because revealing enough about the program to make it useful also fatally wounds the program itself. Thus not only is it worthwhile to make sure these programs follow the "rule of law" for moral and political reasons, enlightened self interest would indicate it's the only reasonable thing to do.

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Originally posted by irfoton: - Despite the posters declaring guilty, I'll wait for the Supreme Court to decide whether intercepting international phones calls without a warrant (even when one caller is a US citizen) is illegal. I'll still haven't seen a good explanation from Congress, Executive Branch, Judiciary on why FISA wouldn't work for their needs. I mean FISA does allow an after the fact warrant, right?

It's still illegal if they don't even bother with FISA, before/during/after the fact. I believe Bush actually caught some heat (for all that it came to) when he started stepping around the FISA court. You don't need to wait for SCOTUS to deem that illegal, it's plainly spelled out in the law.

It's all smoke and mirrors. What we eventually hear about will be what they want us to hear about. It sort of reminds me of the people being chased through the woods by wolves. Every once in a while the group will through one of the weaker members to the wolves so the rest can escape. Regardless what happens or what we are told went on, we will really never know the whole story. Or we won't know what to believe. It's all the same difference in the end.